Bing 2.0 Comes to Mobile as Microsoft Plots to Add Ads
Some quick thoughts on the latest Bing developments
Microsoft’s crusade to disrupt search continues, but not without some speed bumps. While the company continues to make the AI-powered Bing more widely available, it is also trying to fix some of the issues that early-adopters have encountered that grabbed headlines. Here’s a quick follow-up to the various new developments on the most exciting product in consumer tech at the moment.
Expanding Access to Mobile and Skype
On Wednesday, the company announced the preview release of its revamped mobile apps for both Bing search and its Edge browser. The apps are now available on iOS and Android, granting mobile users access to its AI chatbot as well as voice search capabilities. In addition, Microsoft also announced AI-powered Bing will also be coming to Skype, where users can converse with it one-on-one or add it to a group chat.
This move is a crucial step in Microsoft’s goal of expanding Bing’s availability to gain a foothold on where consumers are spending their time. The company made sure to point out that 64% of searches occur on mobile phones in its blog post announcing the news. At the moment, however, you do still need to sign up for a preview waitlist to gain access to Bing’s chatbot mode in all three mobile apps. And Microsoft has not publicly shared how many users currently have preview access nor the amount of people on its waitlist.
Of course, as I pointed out in last week’s article, an important determining factor for the success of any search engine is to become the default choice for the default browser on iPhones. Google currently pays Apple north of $15 billion per year to remain the default Safari search engine. Until that changes, Bing still has an uphill battle to gain market share as the underdog in the search market.
Another interesting side effect worth noting is that this round of mobile rollout also comes with voice search via Bing’s chatbot mode, which could be encroaching on Microsoft’s existing virtual assistant Cortana. It seems likely that, once the ChatGPT-based Bing becomes stable enough, it will either be merged into, or wholesale replace, Cortana on the back end to deliver the beat AI-powered conversational interface that Microsoft has to offer.
Locking Up Sydney & Limiting Usage
The rollout of Bing’s AI search mode has been mired in controversies and criticism over some of its inaccurate and, at times, disturbing answers. Since its initial launch two weeks ago, some users have posted screenshots of conversations where they were threatened, insulted, and bullied by Bing. Some even mistook its outbursts for the first glimmers of AI sentience, with the bot referring to itself as Sydney.
Responding to the mounting criticism, Microsoft made a trio of changes this week to limit the frequency and scope of Bing;s usage. First, it limited the number of questions a test user can ask per day to only 50 questions per day, and five questions per search session. “Very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model in the new Bing,” the company claimed in a blog post detailing some learnings from the Bing re-launch. It has since then increased the limit slightly to 6 per session and 60 per day.
Second, it also now offers users the option to toggle between different tones in its response to avoid some of the more aggressive responses that popped up. Lastly, in an attempt to rein in Sydney’s mercurial personality, Microsoft has tweaked its algorithms to automatically terminate conversations if a user asks about its feelings. Any inquiries about how it feels about being a search engine would now result in a polite answer to end the session.
Interestingly, Microsoft has been secretly testing its Bing chatbot “Sydney” for at least six years. The codename “Sydney” was reportedly first used for some early model testing in India in late 2020, way before the powerful large-language-model from OpenAI was plugged into Bing to supercharge its conversational AI capabilities.
So now the question becomes: is there really a way for Microsoft to put the genie back into the bottle after unleashing it in a rushed bid to counter Google’s own ChatGPT rival, Bard? The revamped Bing got a lot of headline-grabbing buzz precisely because of its surprisingly human and bizarre answers. Perhaps a little controversy is exactly what Bing needs right now to maintain the mainstream interests and get more regular users to try it out.
Overall, it could be argued that Microsoft may be overreacting and limiting Chat AI too much. These recent moves to limit Bing’s capacities clearly indicate that Microsoft prefers to limit bad press as much as possible, especially during the current preview phase. While it is an understandable PR approach, perhaps this adjustment will leave some room for Google’s Bard to catch up.
The Ads Are Coming… but not yet
Of course, the end goal of all this “disrupting search” brouhaha is to make money. According to an exclusive report by the Reuters, Microsoft is reportedly already in talks with ad agencies on how to put ads into the new Bing, including by slotting in traditional search ads. The company told Reuters that it will work with partners and advertisers as it starts exploring the potential of the tech for ads. Still, no concrete timeline on rollout has been reported, as the discussion is said to be in early stages.
CEO Satya Nadella has claimed that search powered by artificial intelligence is the biggest thing to happen to his company in the nine years he’s been at the helm. By offering more human-like responses, the new Bing may appeal to a larger audience fed up with the “ten blue links” search results, which could lead to greater exposure for ads presented within the chatbot. Furthermore, incorporating traditional search ads into the chatbot’s generated responses allows advertisers to expand their reach to a wider audience and enhance the visibility of their ads on the page.
That, of course, is perhaps an over-simplified vision of how the monetization of AI search will play out. In reality, Google search as we know it today drives massive traffic to various news websites and publishers that formed the foundation of keeping our digital knowledge base up-to-date. (Although some may argue that social media is already chipping away at it.) Without the current SEO-based ad system, the internet as we know it today will crumble and have to be rebuilt. Consider the bleak scenario laid out in the following tweet by tech writer Ryan Broderick:
Boy, I sure hope this doesn’t come true!
If they manage to achieve mass adoption without proper regulatory guide rails on how publisher content is compensated for generating AI search results, conversational AI search engines like Bing and Bard will potentially take away a significant portion of publishers’ search-driven traffic. The recent buzz around AI search has already spooked some lifestyle content publishers and accelerated their editorial pivot away from SEO-driven content into more original stories and personal takes. If that happens, and AI becomes a great intermediate between users and media owners, having a direct relationship with your readers and, for brands, customers, will become more valuable than ever.
